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  • Trump lambastes defense CEOs over pay, stock buybacks

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    President Donald Trump wants a 50-percent boost to the Pentagon budget—to $1.5 trillion a year—and a pay cap for defense CEOs to encourage them to produce weapons faster. 

    In a flurry of social media posts Wednesday, the president also said he would bar defense companies from buying back stock and issuing dividends until they invest more to develop new technologies and increase production. Later on Wednesday, the White House released an executive order to that effect.

    In one of his posts, Trump said “long and difficult negotiations with Senators, Congressmen, Secretaries, and other Political Representatives” led him to determine that “our Military Budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 Trillion Dollars, but rather $1.5 Trillion Dollars…I would stay at the $1 Trillion Dollar number but, because of Tariffs, and the tremendous Income that they bring…we are able to easily hit the $1.5 Trillion Dollar number while, at the same time, producing an unparalleled Military Force, and having the ability to, at the same time, pay down Debt, and likewise, pay a substantial Dividend to moderate income Patriots within our Country!”

    In reality, the tariffs brought in roughly $236 billion through November—less than half of Trump’s proposed spending hike. 

    And far from paying down the national debt, the tariff income is dwarfed by last year’s federal budget deficit. 

    “The national debt has risen significantly during Trump's first year, going from $36.2 trillion to $38.4 trillion, an increase of $2.2 trillion or nearly 6 percent”—the largest jump in recent years outside the pandemic, a recent USA Today analysis found.

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    In another post, Trump said, “Defense Companies are not producing our Great Military Equipment rapidly enough and, once produced, not maintaining it properly or quickly. From this moment forward, these Executives must build NEW and MODERN Production Plants, both for delivering and maintaining this important Equipment, and for building the latest Models of future Military Equipment. Until they do so, no Executive should be allowed to make in excess of $5 Million Dollars.” Also, he said, “I will not permit Dividends or Stock Buybacks for Defense Companies until such time as these problems are rectified…” 

    Trump had particular criticism for “Raytheon,” likely a reference to RTX. In a subsequent post, he said the company would receive no further defense contracts until it invests more in production capacity, nor be allowed to buy back its own stock “until they are able to get their act together.” 

    Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX did not respond to requests for comment on the president’s statements by publication. General Dynamics, HII, and L3Harris declined comment.

    Trump didn’t specify how restricting buybacks or measuring research investments would be enforced. 

    The president’s comments touch on a longstanding tension between the government, taxpayers, and defense companies, but they also omit existing efforts like acquisition reforms. 

    “They're working to change incentive structures, which is one of, really, the strongest parts about the acquisition reform,” said Jerry McGinn, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ industrial base center. “You want different outcomes, you change the incentives. And that's what they're working to do.”

    Incentives can include bigger budgets, longer-term contracts, or cheaper loans—something the Pentagon is already doing. For example, Lockheed Martin is more than tripling its annual Patriot missile production from 600 to more than 2,000 as part of a seven-year deal announced Tuesday. 

    The White House released an executive order to limit stock buybacks late on Wednesday. 

    “Effective immediately, [defense contractors] are not permitted in any way, shape, or form to pay dividends or buy back stock, until such time as they are able to produce a superior product, on time and on budget,” the order states. 

    In the next 30 days, the defense secretary must identify underperforming contractors “not investing their own capital into necessary production capacity, not sufficiently prioritizing United States Government contracts, or whose production speed is insufficient,” according to the executive order. 

    There’s also a 60-day requirement to create a provision for future contracts that ban “any stock buy-back and corporate distributions” if the contractor isn’t performing to standards set by the defense secretary.

    Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation, said he can see “the problem the president is trying to address in the shipyards. For a number of years, some of them have maintained a ‘backlog’ of ships—ships paid for but not built or even started—and yet we instinctively order more ships each year. The yards could use this backlog to justify investments in modernizing the yards—or they could use this future revenue to justify payments such as dividends or stock buybacks. They have all too often chosen the latter.”

    The second Trump administration has so far keenly focused on defense manufacturing, and specifically shipbuilding, where yearslong program delays, workforce shortages, and supply chain challenges have increased costs. 

    Navy Secretary John Phelan, like his predecessor, vowed to rein in costs and has pushed shipbuilders to perform and deliver on time. Phelan recently canceled the service’s frigate program, but then brought it back. The Navy also inked a deal with Palantir to install AI in shipyards to reduce costs, automate manual processes, and, ideally, build ships faster.  

    Montgomery, a retired rear admiral and former policy director for the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Trump’s call to restrict buybacks and dividends could be part of a broader calculus to get expensive programs, like naval ships, on track. 

    “A lot of problems need to be addressed to get our shipbuilding system back in order, and this action will certainly not do this alone, but it is part of an overall effort that includes more investments, partnering with successful Korean yards and more efficient design and acquisition processes,” he said. 

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  • The right-to-repair fight could make or break US troops’ robot-war plans

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    Pentagon policies that forbid troops from repairing and modifying their weapons and gear are hindering efforts to accelerate U.S. operations with ground and air robots, special operators and defense experts warn.

    The problem stems from defense contracts that enable manufacturers to retain lucrative repair and data rights, Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said at a Carnegie event on Wednesday. 

    Massicot noted that Ukrainian forces can’t repair much of the U.S. gear they have been given.

    “For some of the Western equipment, if it's damaged to a certain point, they can't necessarily maintain it, and they actually have to ship it back out and back in, which is terrible. So there is a drag there if you try to isolate this core function, especially if you're in a high-intensity conflict,” she said.

    But the Ukrainians can modify domestically produced drones, and that has helped them adapt at the lightning-fast pace of modern warfare. Their efforts are of intense interest to the instructors who train U.S. special operators at the Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

    The robotic-warfare concepts being taught at the Kennedy school depend on being able to repair and rapidly modify weapons in the field, said Army Col. Simon Powelson, who leads First Special Warfare Training Group at Bragg. 

    “We're all about open architecture,” Powelson said in a recent interview. “You have to have the ability to change them rapidly on the fly, and that's also important.” 

    Powelson believes that outpacing future adversaries will depend on being able to swiftly integrate air and ground robots with older weapons such as artillery and missiles using AI, in new ways, often during conflict.

    “When I think of robotics, I don't think of just a drone doing one particular thing. I think drones are a system of systems, systems of systems that are also tied to legacy systems,” he said. ”There's a lot of talk about: ‘Is tube artillery or cannon artillery dead? No, I could have an…operational objective where I have my reconnaissance drone, my [electronic warfare] drone… strike drone, my bombers, my mine-laying drones are all operating to impart that plan in conjunction with tube artillery.”

    In the past year, the Pentagon has urged its acquisition corps to favor open architecture systems that can be easily repaired and modified. But vast amounts of its weapons and gear were designed to proprietary standards.

    In 2025, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and other senators attempted to insert a “Warrior Right to Repair provision in the National Defense Authorization Act. The provision would have required weapons makers to provide “fair and reasonable access to all the repair materials, including parts, tools, and information, used by the manufacturer or provider or their authorized repair providers to diagnose, maintain, or repair the goods.” 

    After the provision failed to make it into the bill’s final version, Warren issued a Dec. 8 statement: “We support the Pentagon using the full extent of its existing authorities to insist on right to repair protections when it purchases equipment from contractors, and we will keep fighting for a common-sense, bipartisan law to address this unnecessary problem.”

    As the Pentagon advances efforts to bring more types of companies into the defense industrial base, it will have to contend with more problems related to intellectual property, William C. Greenwalt, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, warned at the Carnegie event. 

    “This is not a cut-and-dried issue,” said Greenwalt,  a former staffer for the Senate Armed Services Committee. “There are many, many things in the law that emanate from political sources that end up having to be massaged, and I think that's where we are on this issue.”

    Massicot said that Russia has found a way to speed battlefront repairs and mods. 

    “On the Russian side, they actually do repairs within their units. But they have to supplement with forward-deployed defense industry specialists to the front. So we would have to think about what that means for us moving forward. That's one way to do it. You push it forward, and they're doing it together.”

    U.S. defense contractors have taken varied approaches to moving technicians closer to the battlefield. Some, like Palantir, Anduril, and Shield AI, are open about the work they do alongside Ukrainian operators. Larger and more established contractors have been less eager to take similar steps, resulting, for instance, in snafus that affected the use of Javelin missiles and other weapons.

    In late 2024, the Biden administration eased restrictions that had limited the ability of defense contractors to provide consulting and support to Ukrainian forces. Massicot said more armsmakers and other contractors should take advantage of the opportunity to observe and work with their products in the war zone.

    “Why do we still have policy restrictions on ourselves? It's four years later, I think we can be pretty confident that the Russians are not going to escalate because we are starting to slip in observers, but that's just my point of view,” she said. “There's a closing window to get this done. There are some American companies that are testing in Ukraine. I just don't think it's as robust as it needs to be, given that it's a laboratory for experimentation right now.”

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  • As Army narrows field for its flight-school outsourcing contract, Congress says: not so fast

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    Congress won’t fund the Army’s plans to outsource training for new helicopter pilots until it sees the results of a trial program. That hasn’t stopped the service from notifying several companies that they’re progressing in the competition to take on the job. 

    Tucked into the 3,000-page National Defense Authorization Act, which was signed into law last month, is a provision stating that funds can’t “be obligated or expended to solicit proposals or award a contract for the implementation of any transformation of the Initial Entry Rotary Wing training program” at Fort Rucker, Alabama.

    Instead, the provision requires a detailed report on the ongoing, one-year pilot program that is trying out the Army’s ideas about shifting initial helicopter training from an in-house school to a contractor-owned and -operated model. And it requires a briefing from Army Secretary Dan Driscoll on the cost-effectiveness and “the rationale for any proposed changes to training systems or platforms.”

    Service officials and defense contractors have said the new model, dubbed Flight School Next, will reduce costs by taking helicopters, instructors, and maintenance out of the service’s hands. They also say switching to a single-engine helicopter will better help aviators to refine their skills. A call-for-solutions document issued last month says that the winner of the Flight School Next contract would produce 800 to 1,500 Army aviators annually for 26 years.

    Several companies vying for the contract said this week that Army officials had notified them that they’re advancing to the next stage of the competition for the Flight School Next contract.

    The Army did not return a request for comment by publication time regarding the NDAA provision and the names of the companies tagged to move ahead.

    Lockheed Martin was notified by the Army in December, company spokesperson Leighan Burrell told Defense One on Wednesday. Burrell said the nation’s largest defense contractor plans to reveal later this month who it's working with and which helicopter it will propose to use. In November, the company touted its success with international training programs such as Australia’s AIR5428 Pilot Training System, the Singapore Basic Wings Course, and the United Kingdom Military Flying Training System.

    A spokesperson for Bell said that their company, which is basing its bid on the 505 helicopter, had similarly been notified last month.

    “We are honored to move forward in the Army’s Flight School Next program,” said Jeffrey Schloesser, senior vice president of strategic pursuits at Bell, in a Monday news release. “With Bell’s extensive history in military flight training, the proven Bell 505, and the expertise of our teammates, we are confident that our turnkey solution will support the Army in developing the next generation of Aviation Warfighters.”

    M1 Support Services, whose Flight School Next bid includes Robinson Helicopters and its R66 trainer, will also be moving ahead.

    “M1 has advanced to Phase II and will provide the Army impactful innovations including the R66 and many other exceptional training and simulation capabilities,” James Cassella, the chief growth officer for M1, said in an emailed statement. “Our extensive experience at Fort Rucker makes us the only company to offer a seamless, low-risk transition.”

    Lee-Anne Jae Aranda, a Robinson Helicopter spokesperson, said in an emailed statement “we look forward to our Prime contracting partners making additional announcements about our collective participation in Flight School Next in the near future.”

    The current Army training helicopter, the twin-engine UH-72 Lakota, has been criticized by service leaders as more expensive to operate and more restrictive for teaching fundamental aviation techniques. Its manufacturer, Airbus, has repeatedly pushed back on those claims.

    An Airbus spokesperson declined to say whether the company was advancing in the Flight School Next competition.

    “We submitted a proposal that reduces Army training costs while meeting its stated training objectives,” Airbus said in an emailed statement. “This includes changes to the multiple contracts supporting Fort Rucker, altering the instructional syllabus, maximizing the UH-72A’s inherent training capabilities, and exploring a hybrid training option with a single engine aircraft alongside the UH-72A. Our solution is affordable, sustainable, retains the safest rotary wing trainer in Fort Rucker history, and honors the U.S. taxpayer’s $2.2B investment in the program.”

    Other companies reportedly vying for the contract with single-engine training helicopters are MD Helicopters and Enstrom. Neither returned requests for comment by publication time. Boeing, which is teaming up with Leonardo and its AW119T light helicopter for the offering, declined to comment on the team’s progress in the competition. 

    The NDAA provision casts doubt on the Army’s plan to award the Flight School Next contract by September.

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  • Cybersecurity CEO: Is Your Company Selling Or Storytelling?

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    Lessons learned from WSJ, Microsoft, CrowdStrike, and a Fortune 500 CISO

    –Steve Morgan, Editor-in-Chief

    San Jose, Calif. – Jan. 7, 2026

    The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Microsoft’s security organization is recruiting a senior director overseeing narrative and storytelling, described as part cybersecurity technologist, part communicator and part marketer.

    According to the tech giant’s job posting, the right candidate will shape “hero content” and much more, including the ability to “translate technical innovation into human, emotionally resonant content and experiences” that elevate Microsoft’s brand and drive customer trust. On top of that, they must have a Master’s Degree in Marketing, Computer Science, Business or related field AND 12+ years experience in product marketing or marketing communications in cybersecurity and/or cloud services.

    Talk about trying to find the needle in a haystack, notwithstanding that needle’s annual compensation will probably rival that of a top shelf Fortune 500 chief information security officer (CISO).

    Does Microsoft have any idea what they’re talking about? We think so. In fiscal 2025, they generated around $37 billion in cybersecurity revenue, representing about 14 percent of its total revenue, according to Investing.com, and Microsoft’s security business can reach $50 billion by 2030 if it grows at a mid-teens CAGR.

    Companies for decades relied on mass media and its journalists for publicity, also known as “earned media,” but that avenue has been shrinking for years, according to WSJ. Cybersecurity companies need to pivot their marketing strategies.

    The largest pure-play cybersecurity companies, around 30 of them, compiled by Cybercrime Magazine with annual revenues of $500 million or more for the last financial year reported for publicly traded companies, and various sources for privately held companies account for around $48.5 billion in annual revenues.

    The big question for every cybersecurity CEO is this: Are you selling or storytelling?

    It definitely depends on who you ask. If it’s George Kurtz, co-founder and CEO at Crowdstrike, we suspect its storytelling. He’s an authentic storyteller who never comes across as pitching his company’s products or services. Instead he passionately tells stories about the past, present, and future of our industry and CrowdStrike, about the challenges of defeating cybercriminals and cyberattacks, and really, it makes you want to do business with him and his people.

    Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that the world will spend $522 billion on cybersecurity products and services in 2026. When you subtract the biggest vendors, that leaves an enormous purse up for grabs to the rest of the competitors – namely venture funded startups and emerging players.

    At Cybercrime Magazine, we’ve met far too many CEOs who want to put the pedal to the medal and sell, sell, sell in hopes of hitting their quarterly numbers, but without any regard for how they may be sending the wrong message to their chief marketing officers (CMOs), and ultimately to their salespeople.

    If you’re a cybersecurity CEO who doesn’t believe us and wants to know if you may be alienating decision-makers, then listen to Adam Keown,CISO at Eastman, a Fortune 500 company, on the Cybercrime Magazine Podcast.

    Keown advises sales executives to ditch tactics including cold calls, emails and LinkedIn messages that aim to go around the CISO’s staff. And he assures us that old-school selling strategies rooted in FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) do not work.

    Keown tells his own stories about receiving early morning and late night phone calls from salespeople who somehow obtained his cell number. This strategy, he assures, is doomed to fail every time.

    For CMOs there’s a takeaway too. Ease up on the gated material! A CISO is far more likely to read a white paper or report that doesn’t require them to register for it. Why? CISOs know that giving up their contact info means that there will be a bombardment of vendor follow-up emails coming.

    What’s the point to all of this? It’s simple. If you’re a cybersecurity CEO, then now’s the time to start storytelling (if you aren’t already) or your company may crash and burn.

    If you want your company to be storytelling, then you can start today, and you don’t have to be a tech giant to do it. We don’t think it always takes an enormous pay package or a Master’s degree to craft and tell cybersecurity stories.

    The award-winning Cybercrime Magazine YouTube Channel has around 1.2 million subscribers and many more viewers globally, and it has built up by featuring the top cybersecurity storytellers. Some of them are startups. Watch the latest videos and stories for inspiration and then decide for yourself if selling or storytelling is the way to go.

    –Steve Morgan, Editor-in-Chief

    The post Cybersecurity CEO: Is Your Company Selling Or Storytelling? appeared first on Cybercrime Magazine.

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  • Defense Business Brief: US-made biotech; Rocketdyne; Hegseth’s industry tours

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    2026 could be a big year for biomanufacturing now that it’s one of the Pentagon’s top critical technology areas. 

    “We import the vast majority of our chemicals. How do we bring some of that back to the U.S.? And how is that chemical manufacturing base using biology available to the department when it needs to secure its supply chains and develop novel material capabilities? Those two things together are really the crux of what we're trying to accomplish,” said Doug Friedman, CEO of  BioMADE, a Manufacturing Innovation Institute sponsored by the Defense Department.

    In November, the Pentagon shortened its list of critical technology areas from 14 to six. Coming in at No. 2 is biomanufacturing, which isn't typically in the same sentence as defense technology. But it can be used to make key materials for components of weapons and other materiel. 

    This year, Friedman told Defense One, he wants to see how defense leaders try to integrate biomanufacturing with other priorities, such as logistics or hypersonics. 

    “How can forward-deployed biomanufacturing help solve contested logistics? If you don't have to have a chemicals or material supply chain shipped across oceans, maybe you can manufacture at [the] point of need,” he said.  

    A futuristic example of that could be housing a biomanufacturing platform inside a shipping container that runs on seawater, sunlight, and atmospheric carbon dioxide. 

    “Now, you have a self-contained chemical manufacturing facility that doesn't need energy, it doesn't need water, and it doesn't need other inputs, right? Maybe that spits out diesel fuel. All of a sudden, you've fundamentally transformed the fuel supply chain for the department. That can't happen tomorrow, but we're certainly less than a decade away from that,” Friedman said.

    BioMADE, which focuses on bioindustrial manufacturing, is also building three demonstration-scale biomanufacturing facilities in California, Iowa, and Minnesota so companies can increase U.S. production for both defense and commercial applications. The California facility is expected to open in 2027.

    The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act greenlit funding for bioindustrial manufacturing facilities to be “regional hubs for the research, development, and the scaling.”

    “What we see today is companies going—best case, to Europe; worst case, to China—to do these things, and so we're trying to develop this foundation that allows companies to scale these important defense products here, and that includes potentially scaling products that would feed into the organic industrial base,” Friedman said. “Manufacturing is about making stuff at scale. You actually have to take that technology and scale it up to credibly say that you're doing manufacturing.”

    Welcome

    You’ve reached the Defense Business Brief, where we dig into what the Pentagon buys, who they’re buying from, and why. Send along your tips, feedback, and best recommendations to lwilliams@defenseone.com. Check out the Defense Business Brief archive here, and tell your friends to subscribe!

    Revitalizing Rocketdyne. Private equity firm AE Industrial Partners’ $845 million deal to take a 60 percent stake in L3Harris’ space propulsion and power business from Aerojet Rocketdyne, now called Rocketdyne, isn’t the only move the firm plans to make this year. 

    • The deal, announced Monday, includes about five locations and 1,200 employees, Jon Lusczakoski, principal for AE Industrial Partners told Defense One. 
    • The Rocketdyne name is “synonymous with innovation, and solving Space Challenges going back for 60 years,” Lusczakoksi said. “So we view this as…making sure that these types of national assets, these types of engineering teams and technicians and things like that stay here in the U.S.”

    A little more: The RL-10 engine is one of Rocketdyne’s key assets and used to launch satellites and for deep space exploration. But the firm is also looking at hypersonic applications. 

    • While hypersonic vehicles use different propulsion systems there could be opportunities given similar challenges of high-heat environments, fast-moving components, and difficult-to-test materials. Lusczakoksi said: “We'll be looking at hypersonic applications, whether that's on the engine side [or] vehicle side.”
    • AE Industrial has space investments in Firefly Aerospace, York Space Systems, and Redwire—with plans to do more. This year, the firm will also look at other companies that can “feed into” its national security and space portfolios, Lusczakoksi said. 

    New year, new factory tours. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth kicked off a month-long nationwide tour of domestic manufacturing in Newport News, Virginia, on Monday. He spoke to shipbuilders and sailors, largely rehashing themes from last year.

    • “I've made it crystal clear to the entire defense industry, which I didn't come from and I didn't work for, so I don't give a damn who wins. I just want the best,” Hegseth said. “And on this tour, we'll be traveling from the shipyards of the coast to the factories of the heartland to see the work being done by the military and our partners in American manufacturing to usher in a new golden age of peace through strength, a revival of our industrial base.”
    • Hegseth also suggested some companies could see “longer, larger, more predictable contracts” if they “deliver on time and on budget…invest in their people, that invest in more capability and more capacity—not companies that invest in stock buybacks or CEO salaries or more dividends.”

    Stock boost? Defense stocks are up domestically and in Europe since last weekend’s U.S. abduction of Venezuela’s, but the longer-term effects remain unclear. In a Jan. 4 analysis, Byron Callan of Capital Alpha Partners said that “inserting U.S. forces and supporting them could place additional demands on the DoD budget, and if Congress is unwilling to fund this operation, the Administration could use mandatory funding from the reconciliation bill. That would detract from investment." 

    Making moves

    • John Baylouny stepped up as president and CEO for Leonardo DRS on Jan. 1. A 30-year veteran of the company, Baylouny was most recently the chief operations officer. One of his chief priorities will be “accelerating next-generation R&D,” according to a statement. 
    • Tory Bruno has landed at Blue Origin's new national-security group after his surprise resignation as CEO of the United Launch Alliance. Bruno oversaw ULA’s development of its Vulcan rocket and its turbulent path to be certified for national security launches. Blue Origin, owned by tech billionaire Jeff Bezos, is on its own certification journey for its New Glenn rocket; the Space Force requires four successful orbital flights, Space News reported in December. 
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  • Black Cat Behind SEO Poisoning Malware Campaign Targeting Popular Software Searches

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    A cybercrime gang known as Black Cat has been attributed to a search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning campaign that employs fraudulent sites advertising popular software to trick users into downloading a backdoor capable of stealing sensitive data. According to a report published by the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center of China (CNCERT/CC) and

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  • The D Brief: Trump plans oil seizure; US forces seize tanker; Greenland seizure floated; Experts pan Maduro seizure; And a bit more.

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    Three days after sending the military to abduct Venezuela’s leader, the U.S. president said that he intends to seize at least 30 million barrels of Venezuelan oil, which “will be sold at market price, and that money will be controlled by me.” President Donald Trump announced the development on Tuesday evening as a deal he’s worked out with the “interim authorities in Venezuela.” According to Trump, the amount could rise to 50 million barrels. That much oil would be worth $1.8 billion to $3 billion, the New York Times reported, adding: “There was no immediate comment from the Venezuelan authorities.”

    “I have asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright to execute this plan, immediately,” Trump said. “It will be taken by storage ships, and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States” so that the president can personally “ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States,” Trump said in his post. 

    Several legal experts noted online that Trump’s plan seems to openly violate Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which states that only “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.” 

    Others pointed to Article I, Section 9, Clause 8, also known as the foreign emoluments clause, which reads “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” 

    Still others said that Trump’s plan appears to be an example of modern piracy enabled by the U.S. military, while other concerned Americans were more blunt still—observing, e.g., “Forget the impact on Venezuela, this is full-blown dictatorship in the USA.”

    New: American Coast Guard and special forces have reportedly seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker (known as Marinera) trying to evade sanctions during a transit in the North Atlantic, Reuters and NBC News as well as TankerTrackers.com reported Wednesday morning. 

    The tanker was originally known as the Bella-1 and slipped through the U.S. military’s Venezuelan blockade two weeks ago. U.S. Coast Guard forces have been attempting to board it, and were unsuccessful until Wednesday. 

    “This appeared to be the first time in recent memory that the U.S. military has attempted to seize a Russian-flagged vessel,” Reuters reports. The U.S. interception marks the third sanctions-evading tanker seized since December. 

    Russian officials released a statement of “concern” Tuesday, NBC News reports. And the Wall Street Journal reported Russia had dispatched a submarine to escort the tanker, though it appears the sub either did not reach the Marinera in time or its escort mission was ineffective. “For reasons that remain unclear to us, the Russian vessel is receiving heightened attention from U.S. and NATO military forces that is clearly disproportionate to its peaceful status,” Moscow’s foreign ministry said in that Tuesday statement.  

    “At least three other sanctioned oil tankers that were operating near Venezuela in recent weeks have changed their flags to Russia,” including “the Malak, now renamed the Sintez; the Dianchi, now the Expander; and the Veronica, now the Galileo,” NBC reports. 

    Also developing: One other oil tanker has also been intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard in Latin American waters, U.S. officials told Reuters, though it’s unclear just yet which vessel that is. 

    Coverage continues below…

    Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1942, the submarine USS Pollack torpedoed a Japanese cargo ship in Japanese waters, the first victory for the Navy’s Pacific submarine force.

    The Justice Department approved a memo authorizing Trump’s military operation to abduct Maduro, which allegedly killed at least 80 people and wounded at least a half-dozen U.S. troops. However, it’s unclear just yet what’s in that memo, the New York Times reported Tuesday evening. “But Attorney General Pam Bondi promised members of Congress in briefings this week that the administration would share the memo with lawmakers,” Charlie Savage of the Times writes. 

    Reminder: The Trump administration says it did not need to notify lawmakers before the military helped abduct Maduro because that was a “law enforcement operation.” 

    However, “That’s wrong on multiple counts,” argues Elizabeth Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice. “When U.S. military aircraft drop bombs on another country, killing 80 people in the process, that’s a use of military force, regardless of the intent. Even [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth described it as a ‘joint military and law enforcement raid’ rather than a pure law enforcement action. The only question is whether there is some inherent power under Article II of the Constitution for the president to use military force without congressional authorization when the purpose is to execute a criminal arrest warrant. The answer is no,” Goitein says. 

    “If you need further convincing, imagine that another country flew war planes over the U.S., dropped bombs that killed 80 Americans, and captured two U.S. citizens who were wanted on criminal charges in that country…Would the U.S. government concede that the bombing of the United States by another country’s military was simply part of a law enforcement operation and constituted an act of ‘self-defense’? Or would we view it as an act of war?”

    Goitein admits she was hesitant to even clarify these legal considerations, “because even engaging in this analysis risks dignifying the claim that the purpose of the military attack was merely to execute criminal arrest warrants. That might have been part of the purpose, but it plainly wasn’t the whole story.” Read the rest of her argument, here.  

    She’s not alone. Three other legal experts at Just Security arrived at a similar conclusion, citing “the nature and location of the operations, the expected (and realized) risk of U.S. casualties, the known risks of escalation, the operation’s purpose of removal of a sitting head of State, the use of lethal force against two States’ security forces, and the context of other military actions (threats of force, naval blockade) before, during, and after the operation took place.” 

    Following the administration’s classified briefing about the Maduro abduction with lawmakers on Monday, New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen said she has many more questions that were left unanswered. 

    “What now must happen—and what the briefing lacked—is a clear, well-informed diplomatic roadmap with benchmarks for Venezuela to meet, clear timelines and the right tools to help develop and transition Venezuela following this military mission,” Shaheen said in a statement Tuesday. “I remain concerned that we are not there yet, and we will not get there by trading one authoritarian leader, Nicolas Maduro, for another illegitimate authoritarian leader who has served alongside him as part of his repressive regime.” 

    “Amidst this uncertainty and instability, the President is threatening to further overextend our military by threatening action on other parts of the world and alienating our allies,” she said, and stressed, “The onus is on President Trump to explain to the American people what is truly going on in our own hemisphere and how he intends to keep our nation safe and secure.” The same day Shaheen attended that classified briefing, the president had already moved on—and reportedly asked aides for updated plans to acquire Greenland. 

    Update: Trump is mulling options to acquire Greenland, including possible military operations, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday. “President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region,” Leavitt said in a statement to multiple outlets Tuesday, including States Newsroom. 

    “The President and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. Military is always an option at the Commander in Chief’s disposal,” Leavitt said. 

    Greenland reax: Our country is “not something that can be annexed or taken over simply because someone feels like it,” Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a statement Tuesday evening. The leaders of Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland and the United Kingdom also issued a joint statement in support of Greenland’s sovereignty on Tuesday. Canada issued its own as well later in the day.  

    SecState Rubio to lawmakers: Trump really just wants to buy Greenland, the Wall Street Journal reported after Rubio’s remarks to lawmakers Monday.  

    Rewind: You may recall Trump has been eyeing Greenland since his first term in office. But during our own visit to Denmark in 2019, Danish officials told Defense One in a line they frequently repeated in public around that time, “Greenland is open for business, but not for sale.” There are no indications their position has changed. 

    Expert reax: Given a defense agreement signed in 1951 by the U.S. and Denmark, “The U.S. has such a free hand in Greenland that it can pretty much do what it wants,” Danish researcher Mikkel Runge Olesen told the Times on Tuesday. The Guardian has a bit more on that agreement, as well as the history of U.S. military bases in Greenland, here. 

    U.S. lawmakers’ reax: “When Denmark and Greenland make it clear that Greenland is not for sale, the United States must honor its treaty obligations and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., co-chairs of the Senate’s NATO Observer Group, said in a statement Tuesday. They added, “Our alliances deter aggressors and share the burden of collective defense. We must stay focused on the real threats before us and work with our allies, not against them, to advance our shared security. As we confront the challenges of the 21st century, we do so alongside allies like Denmark who stand with us by choice, not by compulsion.”

    Panning out: “The resources of the most powerful military in the world are being marshaled in service of making memes declaring, “THIS IS OUR HEMISPHERE,’” writes tech and media writer Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic, referencing a slew of online memes from the chronically-online members of the Trump administration, especially in the hours after the Maduro abduction. 

    And that flood of social media content, which he argues is “not an actual form of governance, nor is it a kind of policy, but it is performative speech that’s supposed to signify action and, in the case of the Venezuela raid, strength” appears to be happening “because the country’s leaders think it’s good theater, and in a postliterate political era, the spectacle is propulsive.”

    Additional reading: “Further Back to the Future: Neo-Royalism, the Trump Administration, and the Emerging International System,” from Stacie Goddard, a political scientist from Wellesley College, and Abraham Newman of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, writing in November for the Cambridge University Press. 

    Related news developments: 

    Etc.

    Now for something completely different, PBS aired a new episode in its American Experience series, this time focusing on the aftermath of the U.S. nuclear attacks on Japan in 1945 entitled, “Bombshell.” 

    The tease: “Eighty years after the devastating atomic bombings that ushered in the nuclear age, Bombshell explores how the U.S. government manipulated the narrative about the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Through propaganda, censorship and the co-opting of the press, the government presented a benevolent picture of atomic power, minimizing the horrific human toll.” 

    Catch the full 82-minute movie streaming on PBS, here. 

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  • Lone Hacker Used Infostealers to Access Data at 50 Global Companies

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    Threat actors are continuing to refine “quishing” phishing delivered through QR codes by shifting from traditional image-based payloads to “imageless” QR codes rendered directly in email HTML, a tactic designed to sidestep security tools that focus on decoding QR images. QR code abuse is not new, but it remains effective because the user experience is […]

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